by Nicholas Beaudrot of Electoral Math
It looks like Medium John Edwards, at least on the campaign trail, is vaguely in favor of mandatory national service, though presumably allowing people fulfill their service requirements by joining a beefed up Americorps. This is the sort of issue that left-of-center types often have mixed feelings about, for reasons Kevin Drum outlined backwhen he was the Calpundit.
On the stump this strikes me as decent politics, as a way of promoting what you might call "national greatness liberalism". You could package it with a moratorium on base closings and support for ROTC at schools that cancelled it during the Vietnam era, and make a real Sistah Souljah moment out of it. Point out that it's bad for the nation to have an Army that doesn't match the demographics of America and encourage students at some Dirty Hippie school like Weslyan or Hampshire College to join the military. After all, if elites and the upper middle class knew more people who would be fighting in war, maybe they'd be less likely to support war.
As a policy, well, that's a bit different. Obviously the devil is in the details, but a number of democracies, notably Switzerland, Israel, and the Social Democratic Paradise of Denmark, have a mandatory service component and do just fine.
